Writing your own tools in free software reframes music-making as refusal of proprietary control

Live coding with only free/open-source software (SuperCollider, Hydra, TidalCycles, etc.) is understood by many practitioners not merely as a technical choice but as a political stance. By writing their own code, performers position themselves against the companies that monetise creativity by supplying pre-built, closed tools. The claim is that proprietary software concentrates creative power in corporations, while code you can read, modify, and redistribute returns that power to the maker. This is a framing/interpretation of the practice, not a fact about any one scene, and it is the L0 orientation to why the medium is politically loaded.

Examples

The Groove feature opens by calling coding music ‘an act that seems revolutionary’, framing self-written code as liberation from ‘the capitalist companies that monetise creativity by providing the tools’.

Assessment

Explain, in your own words, the argument for why a live coder might choose SuperCollider over a proprietary DAW on political rather than sonic grounds. What is the claimed harm of closed tools?